#013-Things Thursday – Ring-a-ding-ding, smart city progress & more

Using smart city data that is available through open services, I was able to create this graph on Louisville air quality. Anything 50 and below is good air quality and anything above that is moderate air quality.

It looks like Amazon and Google are looking to use their voice hubs as a way to make calls. Also, smart cities need best practices just like smart homes. What about the niche of smart home security becoming a fertile ground for startups?

How the Internet of Things inspired a new startup niche (via Entrepreneur)
With a diverse array of devices from a large set of manufacturers, security of the connected home could be compromised. Enter devices and services to help secure your devices. Entrepreneur puts together a round up of companies who are trying to help make the smart home more secure.

Amazon Echo and Google Home want to be your new house phone (via Engadget)
As Amazon tries to even the playing field in the communications services with its release of Chime, their version of Google Hangouts, Engadget ponders what it would mean for the Amazon Echo or Google Home to become a communications hub. There are a lot of hurdles to clear before this happens, but being able to quickly communicate through these devices is something I look forward to.

Smart cities get connectivity guidance from Connected City Blueprint (via readwrite)
A smart city will become a data-rich platform for a REALTORS’ business. Micro-climate data, traffic flow, pedestrian flow and air quality will all become data points in the listings of the future. So, what smart cities are missing right now are a blueprint, or best practices, for deployment. Enter the Connected City Blueprint. It allows for cities to collaborate and share their experiences, helping those who are starting on the smart city path see what hurdles others have encountered.

How’s the air up there? In Louisville, you can just ask your lightbulbs (via C|NET)
For cities moving into the smart city arena, Louisville may be a great example of how to do it. They recently partnered with IFTTT to provide smart city data through their services. So, you can make your Philips Hue bulb change color to indicate air quality. Or, you can graph air quality of Louisville (see image above). It’s pretty cool. I created an applet to capture air quality data when it changes and put it in a Google Sheet. It took me about 3 minutes to set this up. Once more cities do things like this, we may have an amazing repository to pull from and create some cool mashups of real estate data and smart city data.

That’s all for Things Thursday this week. Have questions? Want us to cover something? Let us know. You can follow us on Twitter @crtlabs or Facebook.